harder than i am
by ulstergirl
Summary: After their last case, she made her decision to leave protection, and him, behind. Goren and Eames, AU after Season 8.


**Written for the Valentine's Day ficathon on LiveJournal at ci_fans_unite; prompt: bliss, rough. Because I wrote this before Season 9 began, story is canon-compliant through Season 8, but changes the circumstances of their last case together, although they end up in a similar place. Contains adult situations.**

* * *

"Now, Detective Eames."

Alex didn't think about it. She closed her eyes and when she opened them, she was shaking her head.

Marshal Adams nodded. "All right."

Still standing on the curb, he slammed the cab door and pounded twice on the rear windshield, and the cabbie wrenched the wheel and they were another yellow cab in a sea of yellow cabs. She had driven this road so much that she almost opened her mouth to remind the driver about the pothole just before the light, but she closed her mouth and the suspension squealed as they bounded up out of it, and her bones shook.

So that was it.

Alex tipped her head back and watched the sky and waited for her blood to slow.

* * *

The thing was, with Bobby, that there were boring cases, and then there were _those_. Boring meant a day waiting around the courthouse for him to get on the stand and take down a defense attorney with the cut of his eyes and a swift shake of his head and that slow determined cadence. And then they'd go across the street to a sandwich shop and one of their phones would go off and they'd be standing over another body in a back alley.

There was straightforward and then there was _that kind of case_, the straightforward kind when it was the girlfriend or the jealous husband or the ex-con who drove the towncar, or _that kind_ where Alex dreaded Nicole Wallace's name coming up, when there were secret wives or old money or torn satin or the kind of clubs that make her think of Vice again. The kind that felt like a walk up a steep hill with a plastic sled in her hand and the wind whipping the snow into her face, slow start and then they were _flying_ and it didn't matter who was in the way.

And of course the last case (she never, _ever_ felt like it was all over, not until that day) would be one of _those_ cases. There would be no more boring days waiting around at the courthouse. No more playing-married. No more smoothing things over with Ross (and, she had to admit, that had gotten old very, very fast). No more wondering where he was, when he was five minutes late.

But she'd spent more years as Goren's partner than as Joe's wife, and they had spent thousands of hours together. And she was angry because it was all over, even though it didn't have to be, if he'd just stopped pushing, if he'd just _listened_ to her.

But he wasn't built that way and she had known that, and at some point it had become easier to show up for work and ignore the baggage that just kept growing and growing in the corner, all the things she'd wanted for her life and how bright their futures had been and how it had all gone so thoroughly downhill. She had been drawn along on his tide, and now she was out of it, she was free, free.

And she would never see him again.

It should feel better, she thought. Better than this. Like she'd finally stopped swimming and given it up, like she would finally be able to sleep.

How could she sleep away from New York, without the press of all those people around her, her family, her—

Alex rubbed her eyes. She could turn around and go back, if she felt suicidal. She didn't know if Bobby had taken the offer for witness protection; as far as she was concerned, with the enemies they'd made, witness protection would just make them easier to find. Wherever he was, he wasn't in New York.

She wasn't going to blame him for this. She wasn't. This had been their job and he had done what he always had, and they had just found themselves at the center of biggest clusterfuck ever. That was all it was.

And she hadn't had the pull or the favors anymore to claw herself out of it, much less the both of them.

She wasn't going to hate him for making it so she was never able to see the child she'd given birth to again.

She wasn't.

* * *

After Joe, she had been able to throw herself bodily into her work, and that hadn't made it entirely better, but it was something to put her back against. She'd thought about Joe and then thought about him a little less, and then the memories became something like photographs that faded the longer she touched them and faded the longer she didn't think about them. She couldn't keep him, not really, and her grief bore him away from her. She caught herself counting all the Valentine's Days they spent together and then realizing, with an unpleasant start, that they hadn't spent all that many together, that once he'd had to go in to work, and once she had been stranded at her father's house during an unexpectedly heavy snowfall, and there had been a few times with roses and candlelight and the edges of her hair touching black lace as she knelt over him, a smile on her lips. But not as much as she'd wanted.

There were entire days when she didn't exactly forget that she'd been married, when she didn't exactly forget _him_, but there were times when she stretched to the end of that tether that still linked them, and it wasn't bliss. More like the opposite. Being blank.

Her first Valentine's Day in South Dakota was blank as that, buried under swirls and eddies of frozen slush. For a while after his death, every place she saw made her ache for Joe, whether he'd been there with her or whether he never would. Now she found herself wanting to turn to the empty six-foot three-inch tall space beside her where Bobby didn't actually stand anymore and point out the particular shape of the geese in the sky or ask if the librarian in town reminded him of Mrs. Harrington or just thinking, silently, that maybe those snowdrops would be a good flower to place on his mother's grave, but never saying it, never slashing that wound open again.

She did hate him. For three months she hated that she couldn't see Nathan or her father and she couldn't ever go to that Italian restaurant on the corner three blocks away from One PP again, and when she stamped out into the snow to scrape off her car she caught herself wishing she still had that knit cap he'd bought for her the day the wind had snatched hers off her head and deposited it with no fanfare into the East River. For three months she dissected her life, teasing the knots apart, and found the thread of him through the past ten years of her life, and rewrote their partnership a hundred times.

But it was hard, to lug all those tattered dusty suitcases out of the back corners of her mind and unpack them again, and soon, just like those Valentine's Days (she had spent far more with Bobby, anyway), the poison, the sadness drained out of her.

Once the three months was done, she was sitting at her kitchen table with a mug of coffee in her hand, watching the rain beat against her back window, and wishing she had said yes instead. Because her life was pretty damn meaningless without him in it, anyway. She had grown around him, like a vine trained to a trellis, and he knew what she was thinking faster than she did and wherever he was, he never did as well without her.

She stirred her coffee and thought that if a former New York major case detective couldn't do this, no one could.

* * *

Alex figured out the mainframe password at the town police station because she could, because there wasn't much else to do besides read an insipid predictable romance novel from the town library, where the librarian really did look like Mrs. Harrington with fewer rings and a lot more flannel, or to stare at the flat flat land until she went mad. She took her piece of chocolate pie to a corner window seat at the cafeteria-style diner and logged onto the station's wi-fi, then picked her way through the few bare levels of password protection. The secretary of the department was a quiet flustery kind of woman who knitted in the speechless gaps between phone calls and gave slight smiles at the boisterous brayed laughter of the officers, the boys' club she couldn't be part of. The few times she had been in the station house, Alex had smiled at Laura the secretary and Laura had looked like she was a thousand miles away, just like Alex felt.

(Alex knew the rules of her self-enforced exile: nothing in law enforcement or law-enforcement related fields; no contact with anyone from her past life. She still kept a gun by her bed, though, because Jo Gage still lingered, like a black shadow in a blacker dark.)

Alex, after twenty minutes of conversation, knew the names of Laura's nieces and nephews, pets, and her birthdate; it took eighteen tries and three cups of coffee, and she was in, and Bobby, well, Bobby wasn't. Anymore.

The remains of her pie were slowly disintegrating on the plate, the whipped cream cracking. Alex wrinkled her nose and propped her chin on her hands.

She had already grieved one loss. Her old life was over.

But not all of it had to be.

She set her fingers on the keyboard again and began.

* * *

Alex lived in the town, between Mrs. Rainier with her rose garden and fine doilies and cluttered photos of grandchildren, and Mr. and Mrs. Bristol with their German Shepherds and photos of their deployed son and outdoor barbecues. She had a schedule and a part-time job at the computer repair shop, because that hadn't required too much of a background check and she was able to fly through her interview with a demonstration. Between defragging drives and reinstalling systems, she took walks and let the bad memories drop away. For too long she'd been clenched so tight, tight in her bones, reminding herself that he was the reason she was _here_, cast adrift. Her star had been on the rise.

_And for what,_ she thought, remembering Frank Adair. The system was already so flawed.

Even so, she wanted it back. After being on the outside she wanted the ride again, that feeling at the end that it was all out of their control, that what they had begun together could not be undone, could not fail. That feeling when everything Bobby was saying was right, everything they'd deduced was right, and someone was about to be put away.

And maybe she'd never have that again, but she might be able to find him. And that feeling, like she wasn't quite all, entirely there, the feeling she'd had after Joe's death, seemed a hundred times worse.

The local florist was overrun with dozens of hothouse roses, and Alex thought of the street vendors in the city with a pang. Her life here was quiet and safe and if that was what it took to stay alive, it was enough, but good enough never really was.

Valentine's Day. Red and pink displays at the small grocery store, wreaths and bows on front doors. Alex had never considered herself an entirely cynical person, but working in Vice had definitely taken some of the fun out of the holiday, and her only consolation was the chocolate that would be on sale after. She tossed a frozen lasagna into her cart, and soon a bottle of wine joined it. Perfect.

It wasn't good Italian, far from it, but it would have to do.

She saw the car in her driveway first, and immediately reached for the gun, still holstered in her purse. It was a rental car. A shadow, a silhouette shifted on her front porch, a man shifting his weight from foot to foot, a tall shadow. And she was already too close; if this was the people who were after her, she'd already be seeing the flash of the gun barrel.

It was odd, to feel hope rise in her chest after so long.

"Hey, Alex."

When she had seen him, in her mind's eye, after the day she left New York, she had seen him as he had been since his mother's death, even moreso since Frank's. In her head he had become drawn, rough at the edges, jaw dotted with stubble or the weight of a greying beard, the weight of fast cheap meals and the stillness of an existence without what had been their life for all the years. And he had missed her, or he had grown stranger, she could never quite decide; either way, he was in mourning for what had happened, just as she had been.

But he looked good, and that little pang of surprise (and maybe even a second of betrayal, of shock that he could be someone different without her) was swallowed entirely in delight. He was slimmer, his stomach only gently rounded above his jeans. He was clean-shaven, too, his hair cropped but not too close; Alex had let hers grow out, since she no longer had to take a three-minute shower and head out to answer a call in the dead of night.

He looked too much like himself, or the person he had been a few years before his life imploded, and she wondered where he'd been, whether he'd hid himself tight as she had, or whether he'd dared his unlucky streak to catch up with him.

She glanced around, her arms full of groceries, before she let herself face him, her gaze softening. "Bobby," she said, happily, and his expression went from cautious to a full, almost rakish grin in answer, coming down the stairs to take some of the bags out of her hands.

"Interesting choice," he said, peering into the bag holding her frozen lasagna.

"I once saw you eat nothing but street vendor hot dogs for an entire week," she retorted, keying her front door open. "So how did you—"

"Do you really even have to ask?"

Alex shook her head. "It's not like I could find a cell number."

"And Lewis hasn't had that much fun in ages. He's already made up a code name."

Bobby was in her house. Alex twisted the rod on the shade until strips of burnished orange light lined the secondhand couch, flicked on the lights in the kitchen, and he was standing in front of, dwarfing her refrigerator.

"So, tell me the marshals were playing some elaborate practical joke on me and—"

She stopped when he shook his head. "No. And that's part of why I'm here. Along with," he made that soft verbal shuffle, "apologizing, for all this."

"You were doing your job." Olivet would've been proud of how steady Alex's voice was when she said it. "It wasn't your fault. It wasn't."

The corner of his mouth twisted up a little and she knew that he hadn't all, entirely changed, but he wasn't facing her when he said, "You know, you could've come with me."

Alex walked over and set the oven to preheat and didn't answer.

* * *

Everything was frozen and easy: the slices of thick french bread sprinkled with flecks of iced cheese and petrified garlic-butter, broccoli and cheese sauce. They made dinner together, and she trusted him to line a baking sheet with foil, to reach the wineglasses on the top shelf that she could barely brush with the tips of her fingers. He explained that their case, the case that had put her in purgatory for more than a year, that had exploded her life so thoroughly, was up for a review. Their testimony was needed.

"But it's still not real, is it? We go back and testify and we still can't get back in. Because this isn't the end of it."

She wanted to go back, with every fiber of her being. Even now, though, she could imagine the weight that would descend on her with every mile, every drop of their bad blood, all over again. Maybe.

Goren shook his head. "We're not home free yet. Besides, even if we were— you'd be able to talk yourself back into your job. Me? My bridges are burned."

Alex nodded absently, slicing off another bite of lasagna with the side of her fork. "Are you really happy, without it?"

He was looking directly at her for once, not sidelong during a suspect interview, not muttering just to register her opinion. And she hadn't been so direct, really, in quite a long time.

"Are you?"

Alex took a long sip of wine, considering. "I don't miss the bullshit," she said. "The politics or the stupidity or..."

He nodded. "All the parts that weren't really the job."

Alex looked up at him. "You've been away, haven't you?"

He nodded. "The marshals weren't happy with me."

"It's easier. To not have to shuffle everything. But I built something and now it's all gone."

"And I'm sorry. I am sorry." The furrow between his brows deepened. "And I know that doesn't make up for it."

Alex shook her head. "But when has life been fair, right?"

* * *

After dinner, after the end of that first bottle of wine, they sat on the couch together and didn't watch the marathon of ridiculous medical procedural shows. Goren took a call on the porch and Alex changed into a pair of blue striped pajama pants and a heathered shirt, and when he came back in and saw her, some light came on in his eyes.

"There are seats reserved for us on the plane, tomorrow. If—if you want to go."

She furrowed her brow at him. "Do we really have a choice?"

She noticed how his mouth was slightly open, until she said "we," and then he closed it, and slowly, slowly sat down on the other end of the couch.

"I can... get a hotel room."

Eames quirked an eyebrow at him again, as though he was some slow or petulant child. "You are entirely out of practice, aren't you, Detective. There's no hotel, motel, or anything else in this town, and you've had far too much wine. You can stay here. We'll go in the morning."

Bobby nodded and she felt absurdly like they were planning another one of their little charades. A couple on their way to New York, not a pair of disgraced cops gone back to their former lives to testify in the most trying case of their career.

What had been their career.

"You know, you're not the senior partner anymore."

"I am _always_ the senior partner, Detective."

He sat back and rested one arm along the back of the couch.

* * *

She found herself talking about Joe, an hour later, over another glass of wine. She'd told him about Joe, early on, in some detail, and Goren knew the details of his death, but that was nothing next to what his life had been. When she told him how everything in New York had become either something they had seen together or something he would never see, Bobby nodded and something about the way he brushed his fingers together told her he was thinking about Frank.

Or maybe even, again, his mother. She had very carefully avoided thinking _how can you ever think about your childhood again, the same way, knowing what you know now._

He fiddled with the drawer in the coffee table and found a deck of too-new playing cards, and shuffled them absently, the cards fluttering between his long fingers. The sound of it reminded her of the city. He reminded her of the city.

"There are some parts of it I miss more than others," she said softly.

"Yeah," he agreed, as they drifted into the first companionable silence she'd occupied in over a year.

* * *

He excused himself and changed and she cast the entire house into darkness, checking for her handgun, checking the locks and the windows and the bulk of his car in her driveway like he was just some phantom, like he would escape if she didn't keep him in her sight. When he emerged, blinking his sight back in the dark, his body cast in silhouette, she was reminded again of how he had changed, of how he was the same again, earlier, when there had been no sadness, no doubt clouding his expression or his behavior. She had been at a loss to recall his last actual genuine smile, until tonight.

"I could have come with you."

He ducked his head, one shoulder against the doorframe of her bedroom, and she sat primly at the edge of her bed, knees together, in the pool of illumination from her bedside lamp. "I can see why you wouldn't have wanted to."

She tilted her head. "It's... like childbirth. You remember the happiness; you forget the rest. It just takes a while."

"Being my partner was as bad as childbirth?" He was smiling.

"Maybe. Maybe a little. I'll come with you in the morning if you make me a promise."

"And what is that." He took a step in, and a bolt of awareness shot through her. Something about the hush of his voice and the low light and the hypersensitivity of her skin.

"We'll work this out. We'll make it so we can go back."

"I told you. There's no place for me."

"I didn't say we'd be going back onto the squad." She sighed. "I wouldn't want that again, anyway. But this is a half-life, and I had to leave so much behind that day." She raised her gaze to his. "Including you."

He nodded, once. "It'll be dangerous."

"It's always been dangerous."

He blew out a long breath. "Where did you want me to sleep."

She stood and walked, very slowly, over the few feet between them, until they were toe to toe and she had to tip her head back to look into his face. "I used to think about it a lot, you know," she said.

"Where I would sleep?"

She nodded, her lips turned up a little. "There's a guest bedroom. But I don't—"

She stopped talking when his head tipped down. He touched her lips with the ball of his thumb, his gaze tracing every line of her face.

"Yeah, I don't either."

* * *

To say it was sudden would be to call glaciers quick. Ten years, a man and woman working in such close confines, no spouses to hold them back, but then, maybe the fifty hours they spent together a week would have felt more like stolen, precious time. They had long known that everyone thought they were involved, that any of her irritation with him first began in the bedroom, that the revelation of his father's identity had torn them apart and left him adrift. And maybe, in a way, it had, but not the way they had thought.

They weren't teenagers anymore, so when he took his shirt off it was deliberately, and when he took her shirt off, it was even more deliberate and slow. They moved in half-steps to the bed, and by the time the backs of her knees were brushing against the side of the mattress she was more than mostly naked and he had an arm curved around her back, his other hand drifting over her, brushing the edges of the hollows, stroking the points and curves. And all the time his mouth was set over hers, teasing and pressing and nipping until her lips were swollen and hot, and the stubble of his jaw brushed her skin when his mouth trailed down.

"Hey."

"Hi," he replied, muffled into her skin, and then he lifted her and she bent her knees, standing on them at the edge of the mattress as she returned his kisses, her own fingers finding the scars, the texture of the hair on his chest, the odd contradiction of his nipples. She traced his hips (_God, how she'd thought about his hips, the sheer swell of his presence_) and he traced hers in return, and then he pushed her off balance and slid into the bed next to her.

"Oh," she breathed.

"Oh," he echoed, and she'd always wondered if he could break her, she'd always wondered what this would be like, and he was _here_ and real and solid, here in her exile and there would be no calls to interrupt, no stupid rules, no doubt.

She wanted to say _what will happen when we're there_ and _what will happen after_ and _will we ever see this again_, but then he cupped his hand and closed his mouth over her nipple and every bit of her curved, her spine and her toes and her feet and her legs, her arms around him, all of it, like she had been saving _everything_ through the years she'd been untouched. His own reaction was no less marked; when she maneuvered so his hips fit snug between her inner thighs, his entire body seemed to shudder over her.

She had known so many versions of him, over the years, so many. This one felt like the last, the only.

"Alex."

Her wrists felt like points in the circle of his forefinger and thumb, and years of foreplay meant that once he finally fit snug, so tight against her inner flesh that she sipped in a rough breath and dug her nails into her palms, he didn't last long. But it was long enough.

She wanted to make it last but when her eyes closed in that soft state between bliss and relief, sleep was immediate, deep and thick. She drifted, she fell with his back to her front, their skin slick and hot where it touched, her forehead against his spine.

* * *

It would have been an act, really, but Eames had been someone else for a year, and playing was nothing now. Goren held her elbow as they boarded the plane, asking for another blanket, pointing out the window at the geese curving along the sky. A couple on a long-anticipated romantic getaway for Valentine's Day. The middle-aged women in the seat behind them were debating which sights to see first.

Alex looked over at him. Together, they'd figure it out. They'd undo it all, and she'd find somewhere new, somewhere untouched by either of their memories, and they could start over, all over again.

Starting with the night before.

As soon as the plane was up, she put her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, and she could actually feel him smile.


End file.
